Original subtitles

I Don't know if anyone can honestly say that they're truly new otter.

Otto bloom was an enigma wrapped in a riddle.

hidden behind a giant question mark,

you'd be hard pressed to find a more divisive figure in recent history.

Half the world thought he was a savior and the other half thought he was a sham.

He was funny, sexy, fiercely intelligent

auto was incredibly frustrating at times,

when I tried to imagine what the world must have looked like through his eyes.

That's just impossible.

I say you were very quiet in the press at the time.

I'm wondering why that was.

Look, I had my reasons. I'm here. I'd really love to talk about Otto and Susy and all that. But

I still got things I want to hold on to, to be honest.

So if that's all right, okay, well, but like, I'm really happy to be here. I'm really happy that you invited.

Where would you like to start at the beginning?

Well, for me, it all started in the winter of 83.

I was still a junior constable at the time.

So as usual, I had me working the graveyard shift.

It was a quiet night. I remember that.

Not a soul inside.

So I'm driving around, you know, just trying to stay awake.

at Westover

Go ahead. They told me that there was this young kid over the Salvation Army.

City seemed to be suffering from amnesia.

Now, I figured that Mandy was drunk, you know, on drugs or something.

Anyway, I was in the neighborhood. So I told him, I check it out.

Well, I get to the shelter. And there's this young guy sitting there

couldn't have been more than 20.

Anyway, he doesn't look drunk, and he doesn't look homeless either.

You know, clean clothes, clean cut, clean shaven.

I asked him what he's doing there. And he says,

I don't remember. So I asked him where he lives. And again,

I don't remember.

Turns out this kid has no memory of anything at all.

The one thing he can tell me is his name.

Otto bloom,

Otto Bloom? Right, Otto Bloom.

But he's got no wallet, no ID.

So I take him down to the station.

Now the first thing I do is check if he's got any priors.

So I punch in his name and search the records.

Nothing. So I'm thinking quite this kid's clean, you know?

Then I searched the phone directory.

And again, nothing.

There is no record of any Otto Bloom anywhere in the country.

I put his name into every database I can think of and every time

it draws a blank

it was as if he just dropped down from out of space or something.

I remember getting a call from the hospital about this amnesia case that the police had just brought in.

I'd, I'd recently published a paper, looking at different types of memory loss.

So I suppose they figured I was the go to girl for this type of thing.

In fact, I was a researcher. I wasn't a practitioner.

I hadn't done any clinical cases since university,

but I just come out of a messy divorce.

So I figured I could use a distraction.

I'll never forget the first time I saw him,

the door opened and there he was

just sitting there quietly staring at the floor.

His eyes were red, he'd obviously been crying.

Everything about him suggested that his condition was psychological.

Most likely the result of some emotional trauma.

Still, I wasn't going to jump to any conclusions. So

I got set up and I went to work.

Testing 123 testing 123

All right, at Royal Melbourne Hospital, interviewing patient 69115.

Would you start by telling me your name, please?

Sorry, could you repeat that?

My name is Otto Bloom

and your date of birth?

I don't remember.

Do you remember how you arrived at the hospital?

Arrived? No

Do you remember seeing me enter this room

now in cases of psychological memory loss,

the subject will continue to form new memories

after the initial traumatic event.

But Otto couldn't do this.

He couldn't remember what happened a minute ago, let alone a year ago.

So I concluded that his condition was neurological.

Please come in

I'm Dr. Fitzgerald.

I wonder if you remember my visit yesterday?

No, sorry, I don't.

I'd like to ask you a few questions.

Please.

One of the things you notice when you watch those old recordings

is Otto's gradual transformation over the weeks.

In the beginning, he's sullen and depressed.

He speaks in a quiet monotone.

He gives monosyllabic replies.

Is it frightening? Not knowing who you are?

I got here.

Then as time goes by, his depression starts to fade.

And before you know it, he's laughing and cracking jokes

are very good with Donald Duck. Thank you.

Still, there was something odd about him.

So how are you feeling today?

Maybe we should wait until the two ladies are gone.

Particularly.

He had this uncanny ability to predict seemingly random events.

But whenever asked him about it, of course he couldn't remember.

How did you know that the tea lady was about to come in.

What tea lady?

And that wasn't the only thing.

Even though he claimed to have no memory of my previous visits.

He always seemed to recognize me whenever he came in.

And Dr. Fitzgerald

it's not like I thought he was faking his condition.

But clearly something was going on. Otto

you say you don't remember seeing me before.

You know who I am, don't you?

You are Ada.

Well, I nearly fell off my chair.

The whole time. I've been visiting Otto.

I've always introduced myself the same way.

Hey I'm Dr. Fitzgerald. I'm Dr. Fitzgerald W. Fitzgerald.

I'd never told him my first name.

How could you possibly know that?

Otto I asked you a question how do you know my name

okay

if you turn the camera off

why?

Trust me

and that's when he told me

that he was going backwards in time.

Well, I think the term time traveler is perhaps a little misleading.

After all, we are all time travelers in a way

we move from the past, into the future,

one moment at a time.

What Bloom appeared to be saying is

that he was moving in the other direction

from the future, into the past.

He told me that he experienced time in reverse,

that what I thought of as the future was actually his past.

That's how he knew my name, because I told it to him in the future.

The average person moving through time,

knows where they have come from,

but not where they are going.

This knowledge takes the form of memories,

which we use to guide us moving forward.

But if someone were to move backwards through time,

then all of their knowledge all of their memories

would not be of the past but of the future.

If what Blum was saying was true, then

the fact that he couldn't remember the past has nothing to do with amnesia,

It is simply that for him the past hadn't happened yet

Now, what did I think of all of this?

Total fucking bullshit

out of that hospital in five seconds flat,

I wanted nothing more to do with it.

And who could blame her?

After all, Nothing like this had never been heard of before.

I idled about the house for days wondering how could have been so stupid.

I went through all the tapes of our sessions together,

looking for some warning signs, some clue that I might have missed,

but there was nothing. At no point.

Did he seem to be telling me anything but the truth.

Then gradually, I began to notice all his little quirks and eccentricities,

the way he always knew when something was about to happen.

When I'm talking about cameras,

now, I was about to go out.

What do you mean?

His inability to remember anything prior to the exact moment he was experiencing

what today ?

And most of all, I noticed the way he looked at me

as if he knew me back to front.

So I decided to pay him another visit.

You told me you're going backwards in time.

Do you honestly expect me to believe that?

Yes. And why is that?

Because I've already seen it happen

and what else have you seen?

I find it's always best to discover events as they unfold.

Humanly.

There's a deck of cards in your front pocket

you use them to test whether I'm telling you the truth

I bought the cards alarm as a kind of experiment.

I thought he was truly experiencing time in reverse,

he'd be able to accurately predict each card before it was turned.

I never seriously thought we'd get that far.

But here we were one minute in and already at the moment of truth

two of hearts

deck of spades.

Joker

Well, it was incredible. He didn't get a single one wrong.

And then came the clincher.

Well, that is, without a doubt, the most impressive country I have ever seen.

What country

he didn't remember any of it. As far as he was concerned,

none of it had happened yet.

And that's when I knew he was telling the truth.

That point on I devoted myself to studying the strange phenomenon.

I even came up with a name for it.

What I still don't understand is how we're even able to communicate.

I mean, how do you know what answers you get when you haven't even heard my question?

Well, how do you have a question to us when you haven't even heard my answer

was like, asking a fish to describe water.

This weird, backwards timeline was all he'd ever known.

Well, one thing that he did manage to establish was thaB

Bloom wasn't physically traveling through time.

I mean, if he were then he'd appear to be aging backwards,

but his hair was growing longer, his nails were growing longer.

So clearly, that wasn't the case.

It was as if his consciousness and not his body was traveling into the past.

Almost as if time, were not a concrete thing,

but a matter of perception.

And of course, it turned out

that this was not such a crazy idea.

This notion that we are somehow all moving through time

that the past is gone, and future is yet to happen.

This is all completely at odds with what we know about the laws of physics.

When Einstein came up with his theories of relativity,

he shared the time is just another dimension of the physical universe,

no different to width, or height.

And along this fourth dimension,

every moment, past, present, and future

is equally and simultaneously, real.

The Big Bang, moon landing, Hindenburg disaster,

all of these events are unfolding, even as we speak.

And so this feeling we have of moving through time,

is simply a product of human consciousness,

the brain's way of ordering events, so that

everything doesn't happen at once.

And since consciousness is an inherent property of the brain,

perhaps his condition was neurological after all.

Unfortunately, in the hospital's eyes, Otto was just some uneasier patient

eating up their precious tax dollars, so

they cut him loose.

At the time, I was living in a beautiful old house in Ivanhoe.

It was a big house was plenty of rooms. And

thanks to my ex husband, I had the whole place to myself.

So it seemed only natural that I should let Otto stay for a while.

Well, as soon as he walked through the door,

he immediately knew the place inside out.

He knew the layout of every room. He knew where everything was kept.

It was as if he had lived there his entire life.

And then the penny dropped.

The whole time I'd been visiting him at the hospital,

he'd known he was going to end up living with me.

For him, it had already happened.

I hadn't even considered how long he might be staying.

But I was getting the distinct feeling it might be more than a couple of nights.

Still, when I asked him about it, he just gave me his usual response.

I find it's always best to discover events as they unfold.

Well, he must have seen the look on my face because he leans over and he says,

Ada, don't worry. If it doesn't work, you can always throw me out

By day, our relationship was purely professional

I interview Otto and work on my paper.

But when evening came, we were more like a couple of flatmates.

dormice felt like I was the one that was going backwards in time.

Back to my student days, living in a shared flat,

back when everything was new and exciting.

But there was a problem.

Ever since my marriage ended, I suppose I'd come to accept,

maybe even actively pursue a life free of romantic entanglements.

Should we say that the more time I spent with Otto

the harder it was to deny that

I was becoming deeply attracted to him.

It wasn't just that he was gorgeous.

Although frankly, that didn't hurt.

It was something else.

There was as if he knew me better than anyone else in the world.

better even than I knew myself.

Then one night, I'm lying in bed.

It must have been bumper night because I remember hearing fireworks.

And Suddenly the door opened.

It was Otto.

Well, I didn't know whether he was sleepwalking or what so

I just lay there quietly pretending to be asleep.

While he closes the door,

he walks across the room.

And without saying a word, he gets into bed with me.

Well, I don't need to tell you what happened next.

And after that he never slept in the spare room again.

We've been living together as a couple for about six months.

And I finally finished writing my paper on Otto's condition.

I warned him that there might be a bit of interest from the press

that he might want to be thrown into the spotlight like that.

But he just kissed me.

And he told me not to worry. He said

whatever happened it was already behind him.

And everything would play out as it should.

Australian neuro psychologist has taken the scientific world by storm

following the discovery of a man who experiences time in reverse.

They're calling him the human time machine,

the human time machine

the human time machine. While the identity of this man remains a closely guarded secret.

his so called retro chronology

is making headlines around the world.

And I could never have imagined the storm of publicity that that paper instantly provoked.

And it wasn't just the media, it was the scientific community as well.

If that paper was accurate, if there really was this man,

who experienced time in reverse,

then his very existence opened up this huge scientific can of worms.

Everything we took for granted, even simple causality

was suddenly called into question. So,

of course, we all wanted to meet the guy.

I'm not sure who was more persistent,

the physicists or the press?

Why do you insist on keeping this man's identity secret from the public?

Look, my subject agreed to participate in a scientific study

not having his name bandied around in the papers.

Then how can we be sure this phenomenon is real?

I'm sure you're perfectly familiar with the peer review process.

I'm afraid that's all I've got time for

I tried to protect Otto. But it wasn't long

before it all came crashing down.

I was in shock.

I mean, there it was, our whole lives plastered across the front page.

Your relationship, we just getting in the habit of working with your patients

shrinking the paperwork to make the whole thing up later.

People began to question the legitimacy of my paper.

They said the whole thing was an elaborate hoax.

In one day out of the blue Otto announces

that he's going to face the press.

Good afternoon. I want to thank you for meeting me out here in the rain.

I'm sure you all have places you'd rather be. But there's something I have to say.

And I'd like you all to hear it.

By now, you're no doubt familiar with the nature of my condition.

It is true that I experienced time in reverse.

It is true that what you think of as the future

I think of as the past.

Prove it then. Well, let's see if I can prove that.

What we need is something definitive.

Something you can all see with your own eyes.

Like if I told you the rain was about to stop,

and then it did.

He was incredible.

From that moment on, he had them eating out of his hand.

Since making his first public appearance earlier this week,

Otto Bloom is fast becoming a worldwide sensation.

The previously reclusive blue is reportedly stepping into the spotlight

with a host of media appearances.

I mean, He's smart, he's sexy.

He's from the future, what more could you want?

Right now there's one name on everyone's lips.

And that name is Otto Bloom.

So let me get this straight. You experience time backwards?

Is that right? It is? Yes.

So effectively, you've already seen the future.

That's correct.

Okay, here's my question.

What happens?

Well, Nolan, quite a lot happens.

Not sure we have time for all on your show.

And of course, with the celebrity came a complete change in lifestyle.

Still, it wasn't all glitz and glamour.

It was a darker side as well.

Because he was constantly reacting to events that hadn't happened yet.

You can never really tell what was going on inside his head.

Still, I couldn't help feeling that he resented being the backward sky

that he wanted to be known for something more than his condition.

I heard Otto bloom was having his own solo exhibition,

I thought it was some kind of joke.

He was this novice who'd never even exhibited before

getting his own show at one of the country's leading galleries.

I remember turning up at the gallery hours before it was due to open

and there was already a queue around the block.

It was as if the entire art community had descended on this one event.

I think a lot of people had turned up just to see him fail,

that when the doors eventually open

no one knew what had hit them.

was unlike anything I'd ever seen before.

Imagination, and all of it imbued with a singular view of the world.

Bloom clearly saw art as a way of expressing his unique perspective on time.

He was effectively showing time as another dimension of the physical universe.

Just as Einstein had described it. In his equations,

paintings, sketches sculpture, photography,

I liked was something else entirely.

That film was an absolute miracle.

You have to remember this was before the days of computer graphics.

So that every effect, every frame of that film

has to be painstaking to achieve.

I think a lot of critics made the mistake of seeing Otto as a beginner,

when clearly he'd spent much of his future carefully honing his craft.

Still, you didn't know exactly heard the reviews

are Tom long. Thank you for joining us.

And congratulations on the exhibition. Thank you.

Your art has been widely lauded for its unique depiction of time.

How much does it influence your work?

No. The memory of the saying that we're all walking backwards through life,

seeing only what is behind us never what is yet to come.

And really, I'm no different. I'm walking backwards just like anyone else.

I'm just moving in the other direction.

Now, at this point, I was more or less used to the whole backwards thing.

Yes, I was becoming aware of a disturbing aspect of Otto's condition.

When we first met, he seemed to know everything about me.

He knew my tastes, my my personality,

every little detail.

With every passing year,

he seemed to know me less than less.

You have to understand that even though Ada and bloom appeared

to be going through life together,

they were in fact, traveling in opposite directions.

As she moved towards the future,

she was moving further into his past.

So the more she got to know him,

the less he knew her.

I don't recall exactly when it happened.

But at some point, I began to realize that

our relationship was coming to an end

that it was only a matter of time before.

Before he forgot me all together.

First, I was angry with Otto.

As if it were all his fault.

And then I dabbled in denial.

And one morning I'm looking in the mirror and

the face looking back at me isn't my face.

I look exactly like Otto did back when I first met him.

The same sad eyes, same empty stare.

And then it hit me

everything that I was feeling

the heartache the grief.

It's exactly how Otto must have been feeling all those years earlier.

The whole time I've been getting to know him.

He'd been watching as the woman he loved slowly lost all memory of him.

I began playing our relationship backwards in my head,

seeing my every first experience such as last.

The last time we went on holiday.

The last time we made love

the last time he ever saw our home

th last time, he made me laugh.

And it was only then that I realized how brave he'd been

an hour alone

while I decided right then to make the most of whatever time we had left

then one morning I went out to run an errand.

And when I came back,

I saw that he had packed his things

he said he was going traveling that

the taxi was on its way.

Well, I I asked him if I was going with him and he said

well, I already knew the answer

we held each other for what seemed like hours.

me crying my heart out him

trying to comfort me

and then he brought his lips to my ear.

I'll ever forget what he said.

He told me he'd always remember me.

Has that for irony?

And then he turned around.

He picked up his bags

and he walked right out the door

and that was it.

He never came back.

After Otto left I started a new teaching job.

I took on various research assignments,

anything I could do to keep my mind off things.

And then one day

it was one of the tabloids.

I can't remember which one.

Anyway, they asked me if I wanted to comment on the news.

I didn't know what they were talking about. So I said

what news and that's when I learned that he was seeing Suzy now.

Of course everyone knows who she is.

After 11 straight weeks at the top of the charts,

Rockstar Suzy Moon is reportedly adding new dates to her sold out worldtour

It's been another great week for Suzy New

the Grammy Award winning artists latest album has just gone triple platinum.

She's a poet. She's a diva.

She's a cultural phenomenon.

My songs are really personal to me. So

I'm just thrilled they seem to be connecting with so many people.

That is generic enough for you.

That's perfect.

At the time Suzy met Otto, she was already bigger than Madonna.

I'm not talking about the singer. I'm talking about the actual Madonna.

She was living in New York at the time. She just finished a huge West Coast tour

when she heard about Otto's new show at the Guggenheim.

Actually, it wasn't the Guggenheim It was the Museum of Modern Art.

Yeah, I mean, Suzy was a huge fan of Otto's.

You know, she had been following him for years.

So I made a couple of calls and got her an invitation.

And so she shows up right at the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art.

And immediately the spotlights on her. I mean,

a famous artist is one thing but she's a rock star.

So there she is at the Guggenheim.

Some people clearly just like saying Guggenheim

photographers are flashing shots and pop by by Bob Suzy

Otto strolls over to see what the commotion is about.

Well, they got to talk and then, you know, I guess they hit it off because

next thing I heard he was moving in with her

love at first sight.

For many years, he must be pretty excited.

Well, yeah, I mean, it was a lot of fun to make and

I look forward to getting out there. but Really?

I'm just thrilled to be sharing that with this guy.

And speaking of this guy,

Otto are you working on anything at the moment?

I'm gonna show you right now I'm trying to focus on being a kept man. But you

certainly a sense that he was getting a little caught up in the whole rock and roll lifestyle,

possibly at the expense of his own extraordinary talent.

But then, of course, this was before the Boxing Day speech,

the Boxing Day speech.

Where do I began?

I remember hearing that Bloom was going to be giving some sort of a lecture.

No one knew what you'd be talking about. The whole thing was

a complete mystery. But as soon as I heard it was happening,

I knew I had to be there.

I thought it was gonna be this pokey Little Theater, right?

But he takes me to this venue, and it's an enormous sporting arena.

I say to him, you may be Otto bloom, or you could be the 14th Dalai Lama.

But if you think 10,000 People are gonna come hear a lecture.

I want what you're smoking.

Was I wrong?

Thank you

Thanks very much. Thank you.

Thanks for coming. Thank you, ma'am. I'm sure you're lovely too.

So tonight, I'm going to be talking a bit about time.

As you know, I have a somewhat

unique perspective on the subject.

With a strange as my condition may seem,

it's really not so different to the way that you yourselves experience time.

Which is to say, it's false. It's an illusion.

trigger the light. And that

is what I hope to show you all tonight.

It started out pretty much as you'd expect, he

talked about what it's like to experience life backwards.

He explained how time can be seen as a friend,

he got to the bit that everyone remembers.

Of course, it's impossible to talk about time,

without also touching on the subject of death.

We live in Dead shadow

every day of our lives.

It haunts us,

that vexes us.

It was our hearts with dread.

And in our fear, we failed to see the truth that's staring us in the face.

Death isn't real.

Okay, let's stop there for a second.

In order to understand what Bloom meant by this, we kind of have to go back to Albert Einstein.

In 1955, after hearing about the death of his close friend Makayla Bessel,

Einstein wrote a letter in which he suggested something extraordinary.

Now the soul has departed from this strange fairy, a little ahead of me.

This means nothing. People like us who believe in physics,

know that any distinction between past present and future

is merely a stubbornly persistent illusion.

He seemed to be saying that if time is an illusion,

then death is an illusion to

after all, if every moment in time is just as real as any other

then, how can anyone be said to be truly dead?

What Bloom managed to do was to take this fairly abstract concept

and turn it into something that people could relate to

his condition, proved the time is an illusion.

And therefore, so his death

or as he puts it,

omnia eternal

No, that wasn't me, clearing my throat

It's actually an old Latin phrase it means everything is forever.

And when I say everything, I mean exactly that.

Every moment we ever experience fleeting, though it seems

will forever be unfolding

somewhere in time.

every breath, every heartbeat

every tear if we kiss

so why waste an eternity worrying about something

as meaningless as death?

Why not take every moment,

every precious little infinity

and try our best

find joy

in every one.

Hearing Bloom speak that night,

was the closest I've ever come to a religious experience.

It wasn't just the lecture.

It was a whole new way of looking at the world.

And everyone there knew it.

Well, no not quite everyone

I don't know what I was even doing. To be honest.

I suppose I was still trying to make sense of everything. And

I thought seeing Otto might help.

Well, I couldn't have been more wrong about that.

I mean, there I was grieving over the loss of our relationship,

which in a way is a kind of death.

And meanwhile, on his saying that death isn't real,

that we should all be perfectly happy. Because time is an illusion.

One could argue that simply knowing that time is an illusion,

doesn't really change anything.

But for me, that knowledge,

in and of itself,

gave me a comfort that I had never known.

And I wasn't the only one.

And Otto Bloom is back in the headlines.

This time due to an inspirational speech

delivered to a sold out stadium crowd.

Everyone's talking about the Boxing Day speech,

Otto bloom and his so called Boxing Day speech

transcripts in the lecture have been circulating worldwide,

with some pundits calling bloom the Article of our times.

I just didn't know who he was anymore.

I mean, there was this man that I'd known and loved been hailed as some kind of Prophet.

His face was on the cover of Time Magazine,

quotes from his speech started to pop up all over the place.

There. I was trying to put Otto behind me, and suddenly he's everywhere.

Well, that's probably enough

for today. Any questions? Yes.

Yeah, I was wondering if you could talk a bit about your time with Otto bloom.

Perhaps you should try and stick to the topic at hand. Anyone else?

But your lecture was about memory.

I was wondering what it's like to be with someone who remembers things backwards.

Couldn't think I couldn't sleep?

I couldn't work. And it didn't help that I couldn't turn on the TV

without hearing about everyone's favorite couple.

Yeah, well, you don't get to be time Man of the Year Without coming under some scrutiny.

Whereas Otto could handle the publicity in the press.

Suzy wasn't so good at it.

Some critics have accused Otto of having a Messiah Complex.

How do you respond to that? Look,

I'm here to talk about my music,

not to comment on what some cynics might think about my boyfriend,

then you reject the accusation.

I reject the question. Let's move on.

Well, with respect, I think our viewers would be keen to hear your response.

You want a response? Fine. I'll give you one.

You see a Messiah Complex. I see a complex Messiah.

There, stick that on the front page.

The Messiah calm I was blown out of proportion.

The way they talked about it. She might have said she was banging Jesus.

She was condemned by the church.

She got death threats.

And they made her life a living hell.

I felt sorry for the girl.

I mean, I'd known what it was like to be handed by the press, but

was nothing to what they put her through.

Look, Susie was clearly suffering from some pretty intense anxiety.

She had panic attacks insomnia, the whole bed.

None of us knew how bad it was.

Till it was too late.

911 What's your emergency?

And your name, sir.

Okay, Otto, what's the situation there?

Blood of this

Otto try to stay calm. Now,

I'm going to ask you to check her pulse.

Do you think you can do that for me?

She'll be dead by the time they get here.

You don't know that.

Yes I already seen it happen

The music world is reeling at the shocked death of one of its brightest young stars.

Celebrated singer Suzy New was pronounced dead late last night

after being found unconscious in her New York apartment by her boyfriend, Otto bloom.

While the cause of death is yet to be confirmed,

earlier reports indicate that it appears to be a suicide.

I was in bed half asleep and my PA called me

and she said you know she's dead. She's Screaming dead. She's dead.

I said who was dead and she said

Susie?

I couldn't believe it.

The first thing I did was go see Otto.

I knew he'd been up all night being questioned by the police.

He figured he needed a friend.

And when I arrived, he opened the door and he was smiling.

As if nothing happened, I thought

you is he in shock.

Or, like, blown a fuse.

suddenly dawned on me that he had no idea who Suzy was.

And living with her a year and he completely forgotten who she was.

I got out of there man. It was way too weird for me.

Anyone who understands bloom's condition

must realize that he had no way of remembering Suzie.

Once she was gone. That was it.

She was in his future now.

I think they expected him to be draped in black

like some modern day Queen Victoria.

But when you look at it through his eyes, a different story emerges.

What we all saw a Susie's death he must have seen as a kind of birth.

It stumbled across this lifeless body

and he'd watched it come alive

will no wonder he felt this connection to her

he had been there right from the start?

Unfortunately, not everyone was quiet. So understanding

and bloom's apparent lack of grief

was about to become front page news.

felt sick, physically sick.

Susie had been dead less than a week and

he was already seeing someone else.

I honestly didn't know what to feel other than concerned. prorata

I mean, when that story broke, I knew there'd be a backlash.

We're talking about the Otto bloom scandal PIP from Hobart is on the line.

Pip. What do you make of all this?

Well, I think it's disgusting. Disgusting is the word.

I mean, he's only just buried his girlfriend and now

he's carrying on with some floozy.

You're dead right? Floozy is the word.

Honestly, the only solution for men like this

is for someone to cut their balls off

little extreme there, but thanks for calling anyway.

woman in question turned out to be one Nora baron.

A publicist from California, who claimed

to be a longtime friend of Otto's.

Well, for a start, that wasn't even a real name.

She was born Catherine Renner

to change the name three times before settling on Nora Baron.

She was a drifter. She moved from state to state

never staying in one place for more than a few months.

And then there was a record six months for fraud

five months for forging bank checks.

Well, you didn't have to be no Sherlock Holmes to join the dots together.

I mean, she turns up claiming to be his friend.

And because he has no memory of the past,

he has no reason to doubt her

and before you can say gold digging tramp, she warms away into his life.

Of course, no one suspected me this at the time.

They were too busy going after Otto.

I'm not sure what I've done to offend these people.

I guess I'll just have to wait and find out.

Because I can apologize for something that I've not yet done.

Nor can I prevent it? Okay, you've got your show's over.

At this point, I was seriously beginning to worry about Otto.

I thought about going to see him to make sure he was okay.

But in the end, I knew it was hopeless.

Why was it hopeless? Well, because he had no memory of me.

We had no future together,

trying to change that was like trying to change the past.

And then one day, I'm flipping through the paper.

And I come across this ad for Otto's latest show.

I can't really explain what made me go along.

I suppose I just wanted to feel closer to him somehow.

Anyway, I bought my ticket went inside.

And when I saw that first painting, I nearly died.

But first, I thought I was seeing things that I completely lost my mind.

And then I saw the title

it was my name. It was my face.

It couldn't have been a coincidence for Otto had no way of remembering me.

So how was this even possible?

find myself thinking back to the day he left.

Well, what if he'd meant it?

What have you found a way to overcome his condition

and hold on to certain memories from the past.

I went home, I packed my things.

And I got a ticket on the first flight to New York.

I didn't care what anyone thought

I was bringing off our home

well, it didn't take me long to find out where he lived.

So I decided to head over there before I lost my nerve.

When i My heart was really pounding,

I thought, what if he's not there? What if Nora answered the door?

What if she recognizes me?

And finally the door opened. And there he was.

A horrible moment, I thought he didn't recognize me

that the whole trip had been a terrible mistake.

And then his eyes lit up.

Then I knew he remembered

everything after that kind of like a dream.

He invited me in, he made a pot of tea.

He asked me all kinds of questions

about my life about my past.

It was as if we were getting to know each other all over again.

And then he asked me the question, stop my heart

he asked me what my name was.

All those years earlier when he'd slowly been forgetting me.

The one moment I dreaded most was when he no longer knew my name.

But it never came. He never asked me.

And now I knew why. That day, he walked out the door.

That wasn't the first time he met me.

This was here in New York.

This was always going to happen

so that was it.

Finally, it all made sense.

He hadn't remembered me from the past at all.

He remembered me from the future.

Oh, I wanted to do so much more than cry.

But in the end, I figured now

we're going to do this let's do it properly.

So I took his hand

I kissed him one last time

and I told him my name

No, I got the hell out of there.

Before I did cry

and this time

it really was the last time I ever saw him.

As time went by Otto seemed to withdraw from the spotlight

and stop giving interviews.

He rarely went out in public.

When his new show opened in Paris, he was notably absent

and then came the bombshell.

After three years in the United States, controversial artiss Otto Bloom is returning home to Australia.

According to bloom's partner and business manager, Nora Barron,

the couple will be moving into a multimillion dollar property

in an undisclosed rural location.

I mean, they bought this enormous house in the country

it was huge, 12 bedrooms, swimming pool, fully equipped cinema

it was like their own private Xanadu cut off from the rest of the world.

Well, the Xanadu thing certainly wasn't lost on the press.

They began to paint him as this sort of modern day Howard Hughes.

The reclusive millionaire in his ivory tower terrified at the outside world.

Oh, totally. I mean, you heard stories that he'd gone insane

that he was being kept by Nora under lock and key 24/7.

And then of course, there was a bloom is dead theory.

Oh, don't get me started on the Bloom is dead nonsense.

You're not really going to cover that I.

When Otto bloom retired from the spotlight two years ago,

the official line was that he was doing so to protect his privacy.

Now shocking new evidence has come to light

that paints a far more sinister picture.

Tonight on conspiracy theory, we'll be exposing the truth

that they don't want you to hear

that the real Otto Bloom has been dead since 1993.

And that the artworks currently being sold in his name,

are the work of an imposter.

Like seriously, can you believe it?

How do you make that shit up? Find a way

where the whole Bloom was dead thing was clearly a hoax.

It did raise one interesting point.

And that was the notable decline in the quality of his artwork.

reclusive millionaire Otto Bloom is now officially the world's highest selling living artist.

The Guinness Book of Records confirmed the title

after his latest painting midnight in Byzantium

fetched a whopping $25 million at auction.

It was like a child's painting.

six year old could have done better.

When that's when I knew he was nearing the end of his life.

Wait, let's back up a bit.

When we talk about the end of Bloom's life, in a way,

we're really talking about the beginning.

Because he experienced time in reverse.

The whole concept of birth and death gets completely flipped around.

The older he was on the outside.

The younger he was on the inside.

The closer we got to Bloom's death,

the more he seemed to regress to a state of mental infancy.

He was unlearning even the most basic skills

and knowledge we take for granted.

And judging by his paintings,

the end wasn't far.

I mean, I'd always known it was going to end this way.

I was the only logical outcome.

I just

I just never imagined that would happen so soon.

Otto, it always seemed like such an old soul.

You could see it in his eyes, years experience.

So to see this happening now, such a young age

was shocking.

Suddenly, he started hearing rumors about his health

stories that he could no longer walk or talk

or he was receiving 24 hour care,

first I thought it was all horseshit that they do anything for a headline

and the photo came out

Have you seen those pictures of Otto bloom

okay, this is what I don't get.

Here's a man who can literally bend the laws of physics

can travel back in time and accurately predict the future

yet he still can't find a good stylist

I couldn't believe anyone could be so cruel.

Of course they weren't laughing belong.

And this just in we are receiving reports of some kind of incident

at the home of reclusive millionaire Otto bloom.

Police have been called to the estate of the former artist

after A neighbor reported hearing a disturbance

and we'll be sure to update you with more on that story. as it unfolds

and back to our story on the disturbance at the bloom estate.

We can now confirm that there appears to have been a stabbing at the property

that is a stabbing at the home of retired artist Otto bloom

Sorry to cut you off there and but we can now confirm

that Otto Bloom has been pronounced dead

after sustaining multiple stab wounds during an assault at his country home

and in case you have just tuned in I'll repeat that breaking news

Otto Bloom is dead

All right, Dwayne. I will write why was it a mercy killing?

You read the papers.

You know what he has become

He used to be a great man in the new system joke.

So you decided you were doing my favorite my stabbing him? 15 times.

14. I was counting.

And now, I didn't decide.

Destiny did that for me. Okay, so is your destiny.

Why don't you say so?

No one can escape the Destiny sergeant.

I was always going to kill blue.

And you were always going to catch me

on there

felt numb.

was like coming out of a car crash.

You look around you in the world still turning but

doesn't seem real anymore.

It wasn't so much the fact that he was gone.

it was the way it happened. That the violence of it all. No one could have seen that coming.

By almost no one.

Mr. Bloom, how would you describe your relationship with Dr. Fitzgerald?

Well, I'm not sure how she would describe it.

Very much you know. Any more questions?

Do you remember the exact time and date of your death?

Yes, I did.

Millions of mourners who are attending vigils around the world

to pay tribute to slain artist and cultural figure Otto Bloom.

The killer has been identified as 32 year old Dwayne Reno, a former refrigeration engineer

and self described bloom fanatic,

blooms partner Nora Baron has arrived back from the Caribbean

where she had been holidaying with friends when the tragedy occurred,

and his fans flooded the streets to bid farewell to the beloved artist.

One wonders if the world will ever be the same again.

The media storm passed almost as quickly as it started.

No one talked about his art anymore.

They rarely spoke his name.

It didn't feel like he died at all.

But like he'd never been born.

Will How do you grieve for someone who hasn't even lived yet?

Is like mourning a child for having not yet been born?

It doesn't make any sense.

Now, I suspect it was this frustration

this need for some kind of closure.

That led to a disinterest in what I think of as bloom's later years,

his years prior to being found in the homeless shelter

all that time ago.

Where do you come from? Who were his parents?

What have you been up to those 20 something years.

I wasn't like I hadn't asked myself these things a million times before.

But now I wanted answers.

I began scouring the records of every public library,

searching for any mention of Otto prior to 1983.

I checked birth records missing persons notices,

I went through every newspaper article and a 20 year period.

But his name didn't come up once.

I took out ads and all the papers

looking for anyone with information about Otto's early life.

I followed up every lead I got none of them checked out.

I went through motor registry, school enrollments,

anything I could get my hands on.

It was nothing. It was as if he just vanished into thin air.

And then one day, I was having lunch with Miroslav Kotak.

And he asked me this question

that pulled the rug out from under my feet.

How did she know that Otto bloom was even his real name.

I couldn't believe I'd been so stupid.

Of course, it wasn't his real name.

I mean, Otto couldn't remember anything from the past,

not even something as simple as his birth name.

I imagine he must have chosen the name at some point in his later years

and then carried it back with him into the past.

Why this particular name,

your guess is as good as mine.

And that's when I knew I had to let it go.

I had to let him go.

You can spend your whole life dwelling on the past.

No amount of wallowing can ever change what's set in stone.

We all have regrets.

We all have disappointments,

things don't always turn out the way we'd hoped.

Instead, they turn out the only way they can.

Which is the way they were always meant to.

So don't let yesterday take up too much of today.

Inhale the future. And exhale the past.

Let every bruise make you stronger.

Every tear make you braver

and every heartbreak make you wiser.

Because the only moment that truly matters

is this one right now.

But that's not quite where the story ends.

Well, a few years later,

I'm sorting through some old things.

When I figured it was time to put my old photos on the computer.

And eventually I get to this one I hadn't seen in years.

It was just an ordinary photo of me and a group of friends.

But then I notice this figure standing in the background.

At first I thought I was seeing things it couldn't possibly be Otto

photo was taken in 1982.

That was a year before we even met.

And then I started going back through even older photos.

And there he was. Time and time again.

Always in the background. He was there on my trip to Cuba.

He was there at my 25th birthday.

He was even there at my wedding for Christ's sake.

And suddenly everything began to make sense.

For the first time I understood what he meant all those years earlier.

When he told me he'd always remember me.

He wasn't talking about the future.

He was talking about the past.

He'd watched over me

all those years,

hiding in the background

for me to discover decades later.

Those photos his way of letting me know that he remembered

like a love letter sent through time.

A wiser man than myself once said that life can only be understood backwards.

And certainly this is true in the case of Otto Bloom

if we were to hold the mirror up to his life

and watch the whole thing in reverse

which seated, this isn't really the story of one man's rise and fall.

It isn't about art, or science, or the pitfalls of celebrity.

It's a love story etched in the fabric of time.

The story of a chance encounter

that sparked a lifelong passion

of two souls who somehow found each other

in all the chaos of time and space.

It wasn't always smooth sailing, there were ups and downs along the way.

But when they finally came together,

they love to transcend any obstacle

even time itself

that earliest photo Bata was taken in 1964

after that the trail goes cold.

Still, I like to think that his departure from the world was

more kind than his arrival

so where does that leave us?

What's the moral of this story?

Well, if bloom taught us anything,

it's that time has no meaning.

Everything is forever and that goes for bloom himself.

Every moment he ever experienced all the laughter and the tears

it's all still unfolding even as we speak.

So in a way

he never really left us

sure, I think he's still out there

somewhere in time.

And I like to think that one day I'll be with him again

but until then,

there isn't a day goes past I don't wish I could see his face

just so I could let him know that did I still love him?

I said I wouldn't do this

okay, I think you've got enough

faces on clocks. They're laughing and laughing

and they look like they're laughing behind their hand

ribs beside row the rollin rollin rollin over and Over that things happen

we stare with wide eyes into a morning sea than a sitting song

we ride out daus and our nights before

lover if you can forget the future

I promise I'll recall and God

we're standing in the sea the tide is dragging you from me

but i will hold I will hold you in my arms

when I let you go

I've been here and what the clocks see

how they want to remind us to forget the day and remember the hours and the minutes and the seconds

and if there's a moment to escape the mighty tip

and the crashing tough they climb to the top but that tide was raw

we stare with wide eyes into our morning sea in that silly song

we ride out days and our nights to each other's

lover if you can forget the future.

I promise I'll recall

her standing in the sea the child is dragging you from me

when I let you go I will hold you in my arms